Evan Schuman's StorefrontBacktalk

The most concrete difference between the two approaches is that Gap will force shoppers to pay for their goods in-store. After it's reserved online, the customer has until the end of the next business day to show up, pay and pick it up. That's good for getting shoppers deeper into the store, but not so good for guaranteeing the sale.Read more...

Different versions of the proposal have been introduced in Congress for years, but all have died without a floor vote. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid used a special process under Senate rules to bypass the usual procedure. The proposal showed some life last month when it passed a test vote 75-24 during the budget debate. A big difference this time around: Amazon.com (NASDAQ:AMZN), previously the biggest opponent of Congressional approval for online sales-tax collection, now supports the measure.Read more...

When this approach would make sense depends on the nature of the transaction. If the purchase involves the seller sending a physical product to the recipient, the recipient has little choice but to reveal name and street address. But for digital purposes, it could work well. And it might even work with physical shipments, assuming the recipient uses a post office box or some similar alternative.Read more...

In a hearing in Brooklyn on Thursday afternoon, U.S. District Judge John Gleeson said that unhappy plaintiffs, including the National Association of Convenience Stores, the National Restaurant Association and the National Grocers Association, and their lawyers in the class-action suit have until today (April 18) to decide on a plan for fixing the information on the sites.Read more...

For years, the coffee chain has pushed a promotion called Pick Of The Week, where it gave free copies of various pieces of digital media (songs, apps, games, etc.) to shoppers who went in-store and grabbed a card with a code on it. As of April 9, Starbucks has changed the program, no longer requiring the card to get the digital goodies. All it requires is downloading the app. "The intent is really to build a relationship. You don't need to go into our stores," said Linda Mills, a Starbucks senior manager for global brand public relations. "This is about educating about our product offerings and just engaging with our customers."Read more...

Johnson had already reversed many of his decisions that were the most unpopular with shoppers—including his elimination of sales, discount pricing (including "mark up to mark down") and coupons. And then there's Johnson's beloved shops-within-the-store concept—which isn't likely to be reversed, mainly because it was originally the brainchild of a former Sephora executive with a familiar name: Mike Ullman.Read more...

Beyond personalization, there is a very practical reason to insist that companies get on the phone for these deliveries: to force shoppers to listen. On the Web, it's very easy to post all kinds of restrictions ("Must call by 1 p.m." or "We're not responsible for traffic jams or road closures") that shoppers won't read and they certainly won't internalize.Read more...

One of the results of StorefrontBacktalk‘s being acquired back in December is that we are going to be expanding into coverage that goes beyond Retail IT into other areas of retail. The first example of this launched last week and is a daily newsletter and site called FierceRetail.

The site applies the same kind of perspective, analysis and bad jokes that StorefrontBacktalk has always delivered, but we can now explore issues way beyond IT. Consider our coverage of an unorthodox Apple patent, the reasoning behind the Sears Portrait shutdown, why Target’s Manatee mishap is a lot worse than it looked, Samsung’s real retail strategy, why Best Buy and Target’s Geek Squad alliance was doomed and stats showing Visa having all-but-cornered the debit market. It’s all free, of course. If you’d like to sign up, our latest thoughts will be in your Inbox early each morning.…

When setting policies and when talking with shoppers after a breach, communicating the message that the retailer is the only victim may prove to be self-fulfilling, as you'll quite likely be an imminent victim of lost revenue and thrown-away loyalty. When a crime has been committed, attitude and empathy go a long way — and they are among the hardest things for many chains to deliver.Read more...

The ruling dealt with the narrow area of recreated music, once the original producer has stopped selling the initial song. But the court's decision is likely to be applied to many kinds of resale efforts, at least in terms of copyright restrictions. In other words, pay once and sell many may have some new retail hurdles.Read more...

But let's turn it around: If a customer isn't a pure-play showroomer who really just wants to see whether that gadget looks cheesy or that blouse is the right color before buying on Amazon.com (NASDAQ:AMZN), what kind of in-store technology can help associates do a better job of helping customers find what they want—and convince customers that here and now is the right time and place to buy it?Read more...

QR codes have always been deceptively easy to use, for anyone other than shoppers. Business Insider recently some of the worst QR code deployments it could find and it’s worth a look.

But the retail examples were particularly interesting, such as Subway putting them on employee shirts, which is a place that employees report no one even tries to scan. But our favorite, depicted here, is a sign on how to use QR codes. And to give the lesson? Yep, the shopper has to scan a QR code. …

"The world has changed dramatically in the last two decades and it may be that the physical presence test is outdated. An entity may now have a profound impact upon a foreign jurisdiction solely through its virtual projection via the Internet," the court said. "That question, however, would be for the United States Supreme Court to consider. We are bound, and adjudicate this controversy, under the binding precedents of that Court, the ultimate arbiter of the meaning of the Commerce Clause."Read more...

These merchants typically use the simplest SAQ, SAQ A. They also always (in Walt's experience) consider their Web server out of their PCI scope, because that server does not "store process, or transmit" cardholder data. Instead, the server redirects the user to a PCI-compliant third-party service provider that processes the card transaction for the merchant. The conclusion is understandable. An E-Commerce merchant's SAQ A addresses a very small subset of PCI DSS. It includes parts of only two requirements: physical security of backups and paper records that may contain cardholder data; and managing the PCI service provider. Processing is outsourced, and it is outsourced to a PCI-compliant service provider. What could be simpler? Oh, and we should add: What could be more wrong than that conclusion?Read more...

Manufacturers have long been using copyright law, which is intended to protect certain types of expression, to prevent this practice. The Supreme Court said no.Read more...

When Lands’ End sent out a 25-percent off E-mail promotion last week, there was a programming glitch that caused the page to simply not work. It happens. To rectify the situation, the apparel chain owned by Sears (NASDAQ:SHLD) sent a corrected version of the campaign out to shoppers, only this time the subject line said nothing more than “Oops. Here’s the working promotion.”

The message included no explanation about the non-working promotion, which caused no shortage of baffled shoppers. But was there a better way? On the one hand, had a shopper tried the earlier promotion and been frustrated, that subject line might very well prompt him or her to try again. And those already frustrated shoppers might have simply ignored a second message with the identical subject line. For recipients who had not noticed the earlier message, would the baffling message make them more or less inclined to open it? Customer service reps for Lands’ End said they were inundated with complaints about the first E-mail. But wouldn’t more of an explanation help assure shoppers that the link could be trusted?…

But the newly christened L Brands won't have that moniker for long. "The Company expects to announce a new permanent name for the Company in the months ahead," the Limited-to-L filing said. That suggests either something went very wrong with a new name the company planned to use or executives simply forgot about the name-change requirement until the deadline arrived—and then had to scramble to switch to a name nobody wanted.Read more...

Wait—isn't losing control of CRM data the biggest reason chains aren't wild about digital wallets in the first place? Wasn't everyone worried that Google might somehow share transaction data with a chain's competitors? Apparently, that fear was well-founded—just misplaced. It turns out the people who will do anything to grab CRM data are the card brands and issuers.Read more...

Given that its program would deliver expensive value in the form of free food and drink at its stores, the first priority of the rollout was to try and discourage fraud. And that involved some creative packaging and identification mechanisms. And a choice to exclude mobile from the launch.Read more...

The coffee chain's first-ever daily deal offered a $10 giftcard for $5. The site indicates that more than 100,000 people purchased the coupon, but—like every other crash—there's no way to know how many tried to purchase the coupon and couldn't. Without knowing that figure, it's hard to deal with the fundamental philosophical issue: Did the crash make the campaign do more harm than good? If 100,000 prospective shoppers saw the order, but 800,000 were frustrated by the crash and potentially alienated, the popular campaign isn't necessarily a good thing for Starbucks.Read more...

One result of this generational change is that Walt is being asked some of the same questions he was asked five or more years ago. The questions range from whether pre-authorization data is in scope (treat it like it is) to the feasibility of E-mailing card data (a seriously bad idea) to what constitutes effective network segmentation (think "air gap"). Fresh perspectives are always welcome, so the implications of this generational change for merchants and QSAs alike are generally positive. But with new compliance staff and assessors come fresh challenges and approaches that can impact every merchant and service provider. Read more...

Customer service is one of the hardest things to reliably, consistently, accurately and—here's the hardest one—meaningfully measure in retail. Other top customer service performers according to the survey are, in order: PetSmart, BJ's Wholesale, Walgreens, AutoZone and Home Depot. Weak performers include: JCPenney, Marshalls, Gamestop and 7-Eleven. (Note: JCPenney has the distinction of being the retailer that suffered the largest drop in customer service ratings from last year to this year. JCPenney dropped 6 percent. The biggest retail gain during the same period? Office Depot (NYSE:ODP), which boosted its score by 11 percent.) Read more...

eBay marks the second direct assault on Amazon Marketplace in as many weeks. The first came from Germany, where government officials are challenging Amazon's ability to force Marketplace merchants to always give Amazon their lowest prices. And a federal class-action lawsuit in the U.S. is saying that Amazon delays its payments to other merchants deliberately and for too long. None of these moves can slow Amazon's marketplace efforts much, but they don't have to. To the extent that it makes Amazon's third-party merchants itchy to look elsewhere—perhaps into the waiting arms of eBay or Walmart.com (NYSE:WMT)—then Amazon has reason to worry, because the advantages it gets from these merchants extend well beyond the revenue commissions.Read more...

We're not talking about pirated goods here, but what's often called the "gray market"—legitimate products that aren't authorized for U.S. sale. Those products are usually priced lower, because they're intended for less-affluent markets than the U.S. Costco (NASDAQ:COST)and Kmart (NASDAQ:SHLD) have sold those types of products in the past and gotten into legal trouble. This week's ruling says they won't have that trouble again. But there are much bigger E-Commerce implications in the court's decision to get rid of those geographical limits.Read more...

"All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing." So said Sir Edmund Burke. But the phrase could equally apply to merchants, and their failure to adequately and aggressively investigate and prosecute online payment-card fraud. Rather than aggressively going after these carders, most retailers consider such losses a "cost of doing business." Where does that leave the honest shopper? From the shopper's perspective, whose back is Walmart seeming to protect more?Read more...